WPI alum, Neil Young team up on PonoPlayer's high-res audio

WORCESTER — When it comes to music, Phil Baker thinks listeners are being cheated.

So when the seasoned product design engineer and WPI alumnus was tapped by Neil Young to collaborate on a high-resolution portable audio player, he didn't have to think twice.

Thanks to the technical expertise of Mr. Baker and a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign backed by Mr. Young, the first batch of PonoPlayers will debut in October.

"A lot of people in their 20s and 30s have never heard high-quality music," Mr. Baker said. "They've only heard MP3s."

iPods and other MP3 players that hold up to 10,000 songs contain files that have been compressed, digitally altered, stripped of some of their content. As such, Mr. Baker says people are hearing paler versions of original songs and albums. Likewise, CDs and record albums deliver music that isn't true to the original.

"It's a question of sitting down and listening," he said of acquainting oneself with the high-resolution sound on a PonoPlayer. "The way the difference manifests is a sense of spaciousness and depth. You feel so much more immersed."

Mr. Baker grew up in Worcester, attending Midland Street School and the former Classical High. His early musical tastes included Benny Goodman, Harry Belafonte and the Beatles, and he fondly remembers time spent browsing a "long-gone" record store on Main Street. At WPI, he played clarinet in the ROTC band and incorporated the study of acoustics into his physics major.

After graduating in 1965, he earned a master's degree from Yale and an MBA from Northeastern University and pursued a career as a product engineer. He holds 30 patents and has led product development teams at myriad companies including Apple and Polaroid.

In 2008, Mr. Baker's book "From Concept to Consumer: How to Turn Ideas Into Money" was published. It struck a chord with Mr. Young, who was looking for someone to help him on a project he called Pono ("righteous" in Hawaiian).

When Mr. Young launched a Kickstarter funding campaign on March 14, he was hoping, perhaps, to raise $1.5 million. He didn't get it.

Instead, the campaign netted $6,225,334 from more than 18,000 investors, making it the third-highest-funded project in Kickstarter history.

"What we're trying to do is reproduce music files in a way that is better than anything else out there," said Mr. Baker, explaining that PonoMusic files will contain between six and 30 times as much data as a regular CD or MP3.

While the PonoPlayer is meant for singles as well as whole albums that the listener can purchase from the Pono download store for $14.99 to $24.99, the $399 Pono can play all types of files. The portable player can also supply high-resolution audio files to a home stereo system.

"The PonoPlayer will make everything sound better. The better the original content, the better it will sound," he said.

One criticism of the Pono concept is that people already repurchased the same music enough times — from vinyl to CD to remastered box set to MP3 — and that they're not going to willing to do so again.

Mr. Baker stressed that anyone can appreciate and benefit from the enhanced listening experience that Pono provides.

Case in point: His wife. "She doesn't really care about technology," Mr. Baker said. "But when she listened (to the PonoPlayer) she was able to articulate the difference in a way that even an audiophile can't."

Mr. Baker said working with Neil Young has been exciting.

"It's been a really great experience. He's very smart, very patient, very driven. He's been accessible. Technically, he's very knowledgeable. And he's humble," Mr. Baker said.

"Neil has not wanted to do a lot of publicity until we were able to put the product in the hands of Kickstarter people," he said. That being said, there will be a number of events around the launch, and a chance for small groups of people to pay to have dinner with Mr. Young.

Mr. Baker said that while he couldn't speak for Mr. Young, he knows the musician is hoping the Pono technology is adapted by other companies.

"The best thing would be that Apple and others come to appreciate high-quality music," Mr. Baker said. "I think going forward, if this is successful, it will be because other companies pick it up."

Email Sara Schweiger at Sara.Schweiger@telegram.com. Follow her on Twitter @SschweigerTG.